Soft Gingerbread Cookies (Gluten Free & Vegan)

I’m serious people, they are the best cookies ever. She has baking them down to a serious art and science. Timed just perfectly to ensure the best chewiest cookies.

She gave me the recipe so I could try to make it vegan and gluten-free. And I have to say … the results were quite impressive.

Update Nov 20/12: After a bunch of reviews the consensus is to bake these just 8 minutes. I’m updating the recipe below to reflect that. Every time I’ve made these the time has varied between 8-10 minutes so start at 8 and go from there. Isn’t it funny how just an extra minute can change these from chewy to crispy?

I’m glad that you liked the taste, but am disappointed that they turned out fragile for you. Hmmm, odd. When I made these, mine were crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. I wonder if it has something to do with varying oven temperatures. I checked on these often through the baking time because I was worried about overbaking them. I wish I had a real solution to suggest for next time … aside from try baking them shorter or at a slightly lower temperature. Thanks for sharing! ~Megan

Glad to hear they turned out so great for you Alissa. How long would you say you ended up baking your batch? Quite a few minutes shy of the 9 minutes I did them at? I am always looking at ways to improve recipes so I would love to hear the timing you used. 🙂 ~Megan

I would use more brown rice flour instead of sorghum. Or, I’d substitute 1 cup with more brown rice flour and the 1/4 cup with cornstarch.

Also, if you’re new to gluten-free baking you might want to consider a pre-mixed flour blend. Bob’s Red Mill has a good all-purpose one and so does Better Batter. There are many others though. Just add up the amounts from the flours in this recipe (so 2 3/4 cups) and substitute it with the same amount of all-purpose mix. Some mixes have xanthan gum already added, so read the ingredients. If it does, just omit the xanthan gum in this recipe. Hope that helps!

These are excellent. We baked 8 minutes and they were perfectly chewy on the inside and crispy on the outside. Even the gluten-eating doubting Thomas will love them. We doubled the ginger and might add some white pepper next time. MMMMMmmmmm.

I have not attempted making these with regular butter or margarine. That being said, I generally can take a recipe that calls for either of those things and sub in vegan margarine with success so I imagine going the other way would work too if you wanted to.

Hi! These look delicious! I’m dying to try them but can’t muster another trip to the store tonight. I am missing the brown sugar and the molasses–(sorry if this is a dumb question, I’m new to baking!)–might I be able to substitute those for something else? I have agave nectar, brown rice syrup, honey, etc….. 😉 They would obviously be lacking the molasses flavor but could they still be good?? Thank you!

The brown sugar you could swap out with another sugar if you have white sugar I’d go with that. If you use a liquid sweetener like agave nectar or brown rice syrup I would be worried about the cookie dough being too moist/runny even.

If you have maple syrup you could sub that in for the molasses. It’s not going to be quite the same mind you, but might still work. If you end up trying these substitutions please let me know I would love to know how it turned out. Good luck!

I made these and they’re great! My friend is vegan, and I’m gluten free, so I needed something for both of us. I cooked them for 8 minutes (since I read that in the comments section) and it was perfect! Thanks!

These are amazing!!! I have some GF friends who just adored these – and so did I! They came out perfect. I am also vegan so it is so nice to find this awesome blog! Your pumpkin cookies and avocado-flourless ones are also incredible! Thanks and keep up the great work!

Thanks Christine! These gingerbread cookies have definitely been a hit now that it’s ‘the season’. Glad you liked the pumpkin ones too. I wish I came up with avocado cookies but I don’t think I did … if you find out where that recipe came from though, come back and share a link because those sound divine! 🙂

well, they certainly taste incredible!! but.. mine didn’t rise, or flatten. they baked all the way through but are more like.. ginger balls. any idea what that is from? thank you for such a yummy food blog!

That’s really interesting Kelley. I’m not sure why yours wouldn’t have risen or flattened. I’ve never had that happen to me before. I’m glad they still tasted incredible despite being balls instead of cookies … I’ll have to play around with the recipe and see what might have went wrong.

…just made them for the third time, and still balls! this actually keeps happening in all of my gluten free baking attempts, even with recipes that aren’t from your site. it’s clearly something I’m doing wrong, or perhaps a product I’m using…

Hi Amy, I’m not totally sure how it would turn out. But, the dough is pretty firm so I bet if you chilled it and rolled it gently between parchment paper it could work. The tricky part may be transferring the cut-outs to the baking sheet though. You’ll definitely want to adjust baking time too since they’ll be so much thinner. If you give it a try please comment back and share how it worked! 🙂

These cookies were absolutely a hit! I’m gluten free, vegan and sensitive to most sugars so I used coconut sugar. I also used half a cup vegan butter and a quarter cup coconut oil and the taste and texture are incredible! Definitely trying these again!

Quick question about substitutions…could I sub pumpkin for the applesauce (I don’t have any & don’t want to go to the store!) Also anything I could sub for the vegan margarine? (perhaps coconut oil or something?) Can’t wait to try these! Thanks!

You could definitely try substituting the vegan margarine with coconut oil. You may find that the cookies are more crumbly or fall apart a bit more easily though. I don’t know for sure as I haven’t experimented with swapping for coconut oil in this particular recipe. Also, I say give using canned pumpkin a try instead of applesauce. It might change the flavor a bit but I bet it would still be awesome – maybe even better!